This invention relates to a fan brake for a traveling textile cleaner, particularly a textile cleaning machine of the type disclosed in U.S. Pat. No. 4,697,298. In such a device, a traveling cleaner unit moves along an endless rail suspended over a textile machine to be cleaned. The traveling cleaner unit includes blower nozzles for directing cleaning air against parts of the textile machine, such as a loom or spinning frame, or the like, and vacuum nozzles to pick up waste and transport it to a waste canister. Periodically the waste canister must be emptied. The traveling cleaner is docked to a unloading station so that the contents of the waste canister can be unloaded. However, the blower fan exerts a strong downstream pull on the waste, holding it against a collection screen in the waste canister. Before the waste can be removed, the fan must be stopped so that the waste is no longer held against the collection screen. Only then can the waste be removed from the canister so that the cleaning unit can continue its travel along the rail.
In prior art applications, it may take as long as one minute for the fan motor to spin down from its operating speed to a sufficiently slow speed to permit the waste to be removed from the collection screen. This substantially slows the operation of the unit, and introduces what is, in effect, a substantial amount of dead, non-cleaning time into the cleaning system routine.
The invention claimed in this application provides a simple, inexpensive and non-wear promoting way of quickly bringing the blower fan to a stop so that the waste canister of the cleaning unit can be emptied at the unloading station.